


Flying Fiercely Toward a High Thin Sound: The Cookies

by Anise



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Armitage Hux Needs A Hug, Consensual But Not Safe Or Sane, F/M, Hux is a prisoner, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Torture, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Love Triangles, M/M, Mind Control, Mind Games, Rey has the upper hand
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-19
Updated: 2019-04-20
Packaged: 2019-11-24 10:02:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 11,992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18163763
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anise/pseuds/Anise
Summary: After their flight from Crait, the remnant of the Resistance is desperate. Allies aren't responding, fuel and food are low, and the cloaking device that Rey rigged up for the Millenium Falcon threatens to fail daily. Their only hope is the experimental probe interrogation device invented by Rose and Finn: the Enneagram. Their plan is for Rey to lure Kylo Ren into a Force bond that will lower his defenses. Then she and Poe will sneak their way onto his command shuttle, kidnap him, and bring him back to the Falcon for questioning. At first, it seems to be working. But the problem is that Kylo isn't the only one Rey bonded with... and the interrogations are not going as planned. Cookies from a coming fic.





	1. The First Cookie

**Author's Note:**

> So what do you do if 99.9% percent of all the fanfic you've ever written is D/G, and the idea of posting anything else freaks you out completely? (That would be... me. ;) The answer's easy! You write and post cookies from a fic that WILL get done in April and WILL get posted after that. :) So here they are. The cookies begin about 4-5 chapters into the fic, and the beginning picks up right after the end of the summary. Enjoy! Suggestions very much welcomed! (Note: the rating refers to the entire fic. The cookies may or may NOT end up containing any of it, but as a whole, this has very slow burn, very explicit smut. If you've read my D/G work... you know what you can eventually expect. ;)
> 
> Also, I'm not sure how to get AO3 tags to work so that it's clear the fic references past relationships or to clarify the most significant ones. So here's how it works in this fic: Armitage Hux/Phasma, Armitage Hux/Kylo, and Brendol Hux/Phasma were in the past. Although all 3 are referenced, and all three are important for different reasons, they're not actually happening in the present time of the fic. (And as we all know... the past is never really past.) The primary pairing is A.Hux/Rey, but all of the pairings have a part to play at some point-- the Hux/Kylo/Rey triangle especially.

 

Rey stood just outside the closed door of the small room at the end of the corridor in the cargo hold, taking deep breaths, nerving herself for what was to come. After the last memory she’d seen of the miserable six-year-old Hux, she was oddly reluctant to march in and force the Enneagram on him again. No matter what he’d done in the past, no matter what sort of tortures he’d visited on anyone else… if they tortured him in return, what did that make them? What would it do to her?

 _Don’t be stupid,_ she reminded herself firmly. _This is completely different to the horrible things he and Kylo Ren inflict on prisoners. I’m not hurting him. I’m just… doing what I need to do._ She reminded herself of the current desperate situation, and then of her conviction last time that she’d only begun to get inside his mind and his secrets, that there was so much more to see.

_I have absolutely got to do this again, as many times as I need to. I am opening this door right now--_

“You okay?” Finn asked her from behind, making her jump. She hadn’t even heard him come up to her.

“You scared me.” She put her hand on her chest. “Yeah, I’m fine.”

“You don’t look fine. I mean, not that I blame you, not at all. I’m sorry you have to keep doing this, Rey. I can’t imagine having to get inside Hux’s mind.” Finn shuddered. For good reason, Rey imagined. After all, Finn had seen Armitage Hux as the ruthless general of the First Order military for years. Most of his life, really. After seeing just how early Hux had been set on that path by his father, Rey understood that he had been some sort of leader since the day Finn had been sent to the First Order as a child. He'd never had much personal contact with Hux until that last time he and Rose were trapped on the Finalizer, after their doomed attempt to save the Resistance ships, just before their miraculous escape. But just knowing that Hux had supervised his entire education as a stormtrooper must have imbued the other man with sinister power. And she was sure that having Hux watch his botched execution hadn’t exactly endeared Finn to the idea of rummaging around in his head.

“I’ll be okay,” she said, taking his hand and giving it a brief squeeze.

He smiled at her sadly. She could almost feel the complicated web of his emotions. Worry for her as a friend. Well-justified apprehension of the dangers she might face, locked alone in a room with Armitage Hux. And perhaps most of all, regret at giving up the dream that he and Rey could ever be partners of a more meaningful kind. But even if Rose hadn’t existed, there was no hope in that direction.

“You’re something much nicer, Finn,” she said. “You’re the big brother I never had.”

His chocolate-brown eyes widened. “How did you know I was thinking about… Rey, is that Enneagram having some kind of effect on you? I mean, one that goes beyond the connection with Hux?”

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Sometimes I feel like I know more about what’s going on in everyone else’s minds than I should. But whether that’s good or not, I have to keep doing this. Finn, it’s the only chance we’ve got.”

She fell silent, and she knew they both understood what she meant. Rey thought of all the Outer Rim allies who hadn’t answered the calls of Leia and Connix and D’Arcy. Of Jess Pava and Snap Wexley and Suralinda telling them all that the leaders they’d contacted had either thrown in their lot with the First Order, or were so terrified and powerless that they’d need to be rescued themselves and could provide no help. Of the low food supplies, and the fuel that would run out. Of the cloaking device that threatened to fail daily, and when it did, the Falcon would be a sitting bloggin bird for Kylo Ren and the rest of the Order, which had to be tracking them after they’d kidnapped Hux.

“If you can get out of him even a tenth of what he knows, that information could save us,” said Finn. “I mean, I know you know this, Rey. Troop movements… technical specs about ships and weapons… the first Order’s plans about everything. Poe would give anything just to know how they get more power out of the Star Destroyers’ new hyperdrives.”

Poe. There was another man she saw as a brother who didn’t see her the same way, and another potential problem on the horizon. Finn understood the situation, and accepted his place in her life. Poe Dameron did not.

“Oh, believe me, I understand,” she said, leaning against the curving wall of the hold. “And I think I can get all that out of Hux. I haven’t been able to so far, that’s all. But I’m getting closer.”

Finn sighed and gave her a long look. “Just… be careful, Rey.”

She waited until his footsteps died away down the corridor, and then she forced herself to open the door.

He was lying on the small bunk, his posture ramrod straight, his eyes staring at the ceiling. Rey pressed the button that controlled the force field around the cot, and it shimmered in response, showing that it was active. She didn’t place all her trust in that for a second, though. Hux was also magnacuffed to the reinforced struts on either side of the cot. She winced at the sight of the metal digging into his pale wrists. It couldn’t be comfortable. Poe and Finn must have checked him a few minutes before, and she’d be willing to bet that Poe was the one who’d pulled the cuffs so tight. In some strange way, he seemed to resent Hux more than Finn did, which made no sense to her. There was nothing she could do about the cuffs, though.

Hux looked up at her, and his pale face was expressionless for a moment. Then his generous lips twisted in a scowl.

“Back for more, are you?” he said in his precise and privileged accent. “Your failure last time wasn’t sufficient?”

Except that she hadn’t failed the last two times, not completely, and they both knew it. She had learned many things that he did not want her to know. The problem was that they were personal secrets, which were no use to the survival of the twelve people on the Millenium Falcon who were the remainder of the Resistance that had been. And she also hadn’t seen enough, no more than flashes that had slipped unwillingly through the durasteel doors guarding his mind.

Well, this time would be different.

“I’m not even going to dignify that with an answer, Hux.” Rey scowled and crossed the room in a few strides, trying to inject confidence and swagger into her walk.

This time, she vowed she’d succeed. Whatever she had to do to Armitage Hux in the process.

End of cookie, Part One...


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks to all readers, kudo-ers, and especially reviewers! This is seriously the first fic I've ever posted anywhere that wasn't HP, so encouragement means a lot. :) This cookie was REALLY fun to write...

Rey dragged the metal cart out of the little alcove in the room, its wheels scraping the floor. The Enneagram perched precariously on top, so heavy that she was afraid it would crash to the floor at any second. She forced it all to a halt at the end of the cot.

Hux turned his head and gave the machine an unimpressed look from frosty blue eyes.

“You’ve got a great deal to learn about how to construct an effective interrogation droid,” he said in a world-weary voice. “Was that thing cobbled together out of random bits of greasy metal, like everything else on this excuse for a ship?”

She scowled. He’d come too close to the mark with that guess. She positioned the cart so that the Enneagram was as close to his wrist as possible where he was secured to the metal rail with magnasteel cuffs.

“So what terrible tortures do you have lined up for me today?” he asked with an elaborate yawn. He had very white, straight, even teeth, she saw.

“You’ll find out!” she snapped.

Ugh _. I can’t let him get me angry again._ She struggled to think logically, which seemed to be remarkably hard when she was near Armitage Hux. She’d had more luck with Kylo Ren in that area—not that all her logic had helped her, in the end. _But_ _I won’t fail now,_ she told herself firmly _. I can’t afford to._ Yesterday, Hux had thrown her off balance by snarling insults and provoking her anger. While he hadn’t been able to keep her out of his mind, she hadn’t seen any truly useful information. Not the kind that everyone on board the Falcon so desperately hoped she’d find, anyway. Hux’s technique this time seemed to be boredom and condescension, an assumption that she couldn’t and wouldn’t succeed in her task.

“I know what you’re trying to do,” she said as calmly as she could, checking the connections and wishing she had a spanner. “And it isn’t going to work.”

“Isn’t it,” he said, rolling his eyes towards the ceiling. “Well, whatever it was that you did yesterday with that thing—Entomologygram?—didn’t seem to work, either, so I’m not sure why you hope to have better luck today.”

“That’s not true.”

He raised one reddish eyebrow. “Oh? Care to detail what you learned about troop movements?”

“Um—”

“Or the location of hidden bases?”

“Well—”

“Or the specifications for new weapons, how about those?”

“Okay, none of those! But I saw things you didn’t want me to see,” she retorted.

There it was again, that flash of fear across his face. Then it was gone, his sharp, sculpted features expressionless. “I don’t know what you believed that you saw,” he said. “But you didn’t learn a single First Order military secret, did you? And that’s what you hoped to learn.”

She flushed. Once again, he’d hit at the truth. He made her feel so uncertain, so off balance, as if she were a child again on Jakku, each day a struggle for survival, before she’d learned any of the tricks that helped her to survive.

“At least I’m not being overconfident, which you are,” she said, uncapping a lead at the end of a cable.

“We’ll see if it’s overconfidence or not.” A supercilious smile.

Rey chewed on her lower lip briefly. Maybe it was _better_ to have a bit of doubt. In fact, her own belief that she was being completely logical with Kylo Ren a month earlier, that her vision of his future had been complete, that she’d pull him back from darkness and turn him to the light—in short, her overconfidence-- had been her downfall with him. _I won’t make that mistake again._ _And I won’t let Hux bait me!_

Without another word, she turned round and began to hook up the cables to the IV port that Doctor Kalonia had installed in his wrist. She couldn’t help remembering what the doctor has said to her in the hallway after she’d first put them in the day before. _It’s all right to feel the way you do, Rey. This feels wrong to me, too. This isn’t what I trained to do. I’d rather be healing people peacefully, or at least tending to battlefield injuries. I don’t want to be taking part in anything that smacks of torture as much as this. But I know I’m working for a greater good. And so are you._

Rey’s fingers brushed against his wrist, and his skin felt warm and smooth and soft. She could feel the pulse beating in his veins, snaking down his lean, muscular forearm. Through his pale, translucent skin, they were almost the same blue color as his eyes. He turned his head to look at her as she worked, but he didn’t say a word. His red-blond hair was mussed, several strands hanging in his face, emphasizing his chiseled cheekbones and square jawline. Against her will, the same thought struck her as the day before. If she hadn’t known what Armitage Hux was—a monster on the same level as Kylo Ren—then she would have thought him an incredibly handsome man.

But knowing what she did, even such a fleeting thought made her furious at herself.

 _Oh, great,_ she thought, checking that the port was sterile. _All it takes is a good body and a handsome face lying in a cot in front of me, and I’m apparently ready to forget about the fact that he blew up the Hosnian system. Was Poe right? Maybe I really have waited long enough. Maybe I need to finally just have sex with someone, and he’s there, and then I could be a lot calmer around Armitage Hux, I’m sure of it--_

 “Having any trouble?” Hux asked in a low, smooth voice. If Rey had heard it from anyone else in the galaxy, she might have called it sexy.

“Shut up, Hux,” she said, turning back to the cart.

She opened a bottle of sterilizing solution and sprayed it on the needles at the ends of the leads, filling the air with a sharp, keen smell. Then she turned back to the cot and slid the two needles into the IV ports fixed into Hux’s right forearm near the crook of his elbow. The heparin lock was functional, keeping the ports open, or at least she hoped so. Dr. Kalonia  would have had a better idea of what to look for. But she already knew from yesterday’s events that if anybody else was in the room, the Enneagram had no chance of success.

Rey turned the red dial and then the green to their correct levels before sitting down. The Enneagram began the slow, steady beeping that meant it was working. Or should be working, anyway. She waited a few minutes and then leaned forward towards him, stopping just short of the shimmering forcefield that separated them.

“Listen to the sound of my voice,” she said quietly. “You’re feeling very comfortable, aren’t you? Very relaxed.”

“I might be,” said Hux, “if I weren’t cuffed to a cot in the cargo hold of a dirty Corellian freighter with a stupid scavenger girl sticking needles into my arm.”

Rey gritted her teeth. “You’re getting sleepier and sleepier. But you still want to stay awake, don’t you? You’re going to a very peaceful place, following the sound of my voice…”

“It’s not going to be very peaceful once the First Order finds us and blows this piece of junk out of the sky,” he pointed out. “What’s holding it together, by the bye—spit and baling wire?”

“Shut _up,_ Hux… you’re completely relaxed now,” she snarled. “You’re… uh… floating in a calm peaceful place. You want to tell me all of your military secrets. You’re going to start with the exact specs of the Finalizer’s hyperdrive…”

 “This isn’t working,” he said in an almost kindly way. “Why don’t you stop making a fool of yourself?”

“Argh!” She leaped to her feet and kicked the chair behind her until it crashed off the opposite wall.

“Apparently you’re not quite done with the project.”

She bent down to the cot and fixed him with a deadly glare. In response, he smirked.

“You should know that the Enneagram also works as a torture droid,” she said between clenched teeth.

“Really? Then why didn’t your thuggish friends try that last night instead of breaking out the thumbscrews, or whatever those were?”

 “It works now. Finn and Rose fixed it,” she said wildly.

Hux’s lips twitched with amusement. “No, they didn’t.”

Could he see something of what was going through her mind now? It was a very unpleasant thought. No, it was only a lucky guess, and Rey knew that her face had given the secret away.

“BB-8 doubles as one, you know.  And I’ll bring him in here and use that function on you if I have to!” Kriff, but he brought out the worst in her every time.

“No, he doesn’t. Torture is against his programming,” Hux correctly pointed out.

Rey fumed silently. Her heart was pounding, and her face was hot with anger and frustration. He was outwitting her. Maybe there was no way to turn the tables on him at all. At last, she raised her head.

“Well, I can still try it,” she said. “And if I succeed, I could save all of my friends. I know this is a foreign concept to you, but I actually care about people. And I care about the Rebellion’s cause, and our ideals. You couldn’t possibly understand that.”

“I care very much about the ideals that matter,” he said, surprising her. “But you wouldn’t understand any of that, and neither would the rest of your rabble. And as for your other plan… Do you have any idea many tortures I’ve survived? Your pitiful attempts could not affect me.”

“Oh, as if you’d know anything about that,” she scoffed. “Don’t be ridiculous. All you know how to do is inflict pain on other people. You’ve never been on the receiving end.”

His nostrils flared. “You know nothing about it.”

She was feeling something from him, a trace of strong emotion like a sudden gust of wind whipping across her skin. But she couldn’t pick up anything specific, and that fact made her angrier.

“If you keep this up, you’re going to find out what I can do without a droid!”

“Your little friends already tried more standard techniques on me. You saw for yourself that they didn’t work.”

He was right. And not only would they not have worked, she already knew that she wouldn’t use them. She’d spent a lifetime fighting when she had no other choice. In the last couple of months, she’d shot and killed for survival, when it was her or faceless stormtroopers in a TIE fighter. But to deliberately set out to hurt another person for nothing but her own gain… no.

“I don’t pretend to know exactly what purpose that Enneagram mechanism serves,” he went on. “But if you’re trying to torture me, there’s something you need to understand. Think of this as a free piece of advice. Whether you utilize a droid or a probe or much older means, torture only works with intent. Your will must come from a place of darkness within.”

“You’d know about that,” she snapped.

“Yes,” he said softly. “I would indeed. But you wouldn’t even make an attempt, would you? Ah… you can’t. Is it because you’re too weak? That’s it, isn’t it?”

 _He really can read my mind. Or he’s getting something from me, anyway. Oh, R’iia, help me now_ … Her hands gripped the metal rails of the cot until her knuckles went white.  

“That’s not true,” she said, fighting to keep her voice steady. “I’m stronger than you could ever know. I had to be, on Jakku. Weaklings don’t survive there. I was brought up in an orphanage by the Acolytes, and I was one of the lucky ones. I saw the unlucky children starve to death outside the doors. I’ve stumbled over their bones in the wastelands. I’ve gone without food for days on end, I’ve crawled through the ship graveyard without water until I thought I was going to dry up into dust. I’ve had to fight all my life- children, women, men—oh, especially men! I’ve had to keep Unkar Plett off me since I was thirteen years old, with all his leering and lustful looks and attempts to get me alone—have _you_ ever seen a Crolute lick his lips?  I’ve been left for dead in the middle of the desert in a _X'us'R'iiadu_ dust storm. And I had to get up and crawl back home into a wrecked AT-AT, with nobody waiting for me, nobody to help me, nobody to protect me, ever. You’re the one who doesn’t know anything about strength!”

Hux’s mouth had actually dropped open. He gave her a long, strange look. Then he shook his head. “No. No… you’re weak, you must be…”

Rey clenched her fists. For a second, she’d almost gotten into his head. She’d been so close. And he knew that she’d almost succeeded; she could tell.

She leaned closer. “I had nobody to help me. I never did. I’d try to make friends, but they’d always betray me. I had no mother, no father. _Your_ father spoiled you, cosseted you, gave you everything you ever wanted, I’m sure—oh, I’ve learned a thing or two about the First Order in the past months; I know what Brendol Hux was. And your mother—” She stopped short. She didn’t actually know anything about his mother, although she was sure that any relative of his could only be a pampered, privileged aristocrat.

Hux’s muscles all tensed, and the IV port wobbled as his hands clenched. “Don’t you dare to say a single word about my mother, you filthy little scavenger whore—"

Without thought, without reason, moving only on a surge of furious emotion, Rey punched her hand through the force field and pressed into the side of his head, hard. Her fingers slid through his soft, thick hair, and the shock reverberated all through her arm when she touched him.  

Much too late, Rey realized what had happened. The Enneagram wasn’t working at all. Hux was already angry at her. And _she’d_ been the one to break the force field. What if the magnacuffs somehow didn’t hold? What if he managed to overpower her and get out of the room? She had no weapons, and Force powers had never felt so far from her control as they did at that moment. _This is the single dumbest thing I’m ever done!_

But then Hux gasped. His eyes met hers, and they were filled with fear, almost terror. She pushed her other hand inside the force field too, feeling it flicker and break around her, and she fell down and across his upper body. For an idiotic second, all she could think about was how hard and lean his chest muscles were as she pressed against him

Then she shook her head and scrambled up even further, until their faces were inches apart. She stared into his mesmerizing blue eyes,  tracing the crystalline structure around his pupils, the facets of azure and gray. And then she was falling into that structure somehow, falling into his head where her fingers grabbed, as if she had found a niche in a sheer stone wall and propelled herself inwards. She soared further and further into darkness, deeper than she’d managed last time; she knew that at once. Her heart raced in excitement. He couldn’t keep her out! He couldn’t keep his secrets away from her. What would she now? Strategic meetings. War planning. Weapons design. Any second now. Soon soon soon…

A scene was rushing up to meet her, and she fell into Hux’s memory eagerly.

But as she realized instantly, that memory was not what she’d expected to see.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks to all readers, reviewers, and kudo-ers! :) This is a shorter cookie chapter, but there's a MUCH longer one coming up tomorrow. Poor Hux...

Rey struggled to organize the overwhelming impressions rushing relentlessly towards her. They clearly weren’t on the Imperialis anymore; this was not Emperor Palpatine’s old pleasure yacht or a replica of it. No. She rapidly catalogued the features she saw, and realized that it had to be something at least similar to a Star Destroyer. So the First Order had at least begun to build those in the Outer Regions by then. She knew wrecked Star Destroyers inside and out; it was incredible to actually be inside one when it was complete and functional instead of a mess fit only for salvage. The boy below her was running, breathing hard, scrambling down corridors, ignoring the surprised glances officers were giving him. Now he was passing through a hallway illuminated by a flat, glowing light that shone through the latticed walls. He wasn’t watching where he was going, so he stumbled and ran right into a metal column. Footsteps came up behind him, brisk but unhurried.

“I think you’d better stop,” said the clipped voice of Brendol Hux, putting a hand on his son’s shoulder.

Armitage Hux raised his head, and yes, it was him, maybe ten years later. He was a tall boy, lanky and a bit awkward, sharp-featured and fair-haired, perhaps fifteen or sixteen years old. Rey didn’t know why the memory had jumped so far ahead in time, but she had a sense that whatever part of Hux’s teenage years she was about to see, it was significant—and it was a scene that he would not have wanted her to witness.

 “Nobody has yet seen you, for which you should be thankful,” said Brendol. “I know I am. Be _quiet_ , Armitage.”

The teenaged Hux struggled a bit. He  had gone far enough so that he’d almost reached the main bridge. Another hundred yards, and he would have burst out into the much larger space. “Let me go!” he whispered between clenched teeth.

“I most certainly will not,” said Brendol. “Just stand still.”

“But—”

“My dear boy,” said Brendol, “it’s far too late anyway. There’s nothing you can do to alter the outcome. That time has passed.”

Rey could see, could feel, the moment when Armitage gave up and gave in to his father’s words. His thin shoulders slumped. He turned to stare onto the bridge.

For several seconds, all Rey could do was trace the new, shiny features she’d so often seen in the wrecks she’d salvaged. There was the long narrow walkway leading out to the circular space, officers intently watching consoles set into the walls above. Crewmembers bustled in and out of the secondary command center below, peering at terminals and working furiously at controls. Rey had a perfect view of what was happening outside of the huge triangular windows.

Armitage watched too. The battle looked eerily like a game played on a faraway holoscreen. Tiny ships chased each other across a star-studded black background. And there was one ship in particular that he tracked, one he focused on, flying closer to the Star Destroyer than the others. A Lambda-class T4 shuttle, Rey’s mind catalogued automatically. She’d only seen one or two in her life; the large, elegant shuttles were meant for the use of high ranking officials and weren’t designed for combat, and precious few had ended up in the ships’ graveyard. Their specs were in the manuals she had read constantly on Jakku, though, and she was fairly sure she had identified it correctly. It reminded her of a slightly smaller version of Hux’s ship, now cloaked and hidden on Teth. What on earth was a ship like that doing in the middle of a dogfight?

The shuttle swooped and weaved in and out of the line of fire from the enemy fighters. Rey thought for an instant that it might escape and survive. But suddenly it was caught in a hailstorm of turbolasers, and it exploded in a fireball. The sleek ship was gone.

The boy choked on a sob.

“What a shame,” said Brendol, sounding genuinely regretful—but not overly so.

Armitage did not reply, but Rey felt  how hard he struggled to control himself and how close he was to losing that control.

 “I think you’d better return to your quarters now,” said Brendol.

His son was already stalking away.

This was the end of the scene. But it was not the end of what happened, not at all; there was much more to see. Rey knew it instinctively. If she could just stay in Hux’s memory a little while longer, then--

He looked up at the ceiling as if he sensed her presence, frowning slightly. Panic clutched at Rey’s chest. He couldn’t possibly be seeing her. These events had happened over a decade before. But how did an Enneagram really work, anyway? For all she knew, the present  could indeed reach out and touch the past.

The teenaged Hux shook his head and started down the corridor again, and Rey realized that she was not going with him. She could feel the thread between them stretching too far, threatening to snap. _I’ve got to stay! There’s so much I still don’t know about what really happened._

There was only one way, and she knew it at once. She had to go deeper. If she kept hovering somewhere outside Hux, she would be forced out, whether by his will or the nature of the Enneagram itself. She had to sink into this boy’s mind, to the point where he couldn’t keep her out if he tried. She had a sudden sense of swooping vertigo, like the first time she’d ever been forced to drop over the edge of a wrecked ship without seeing where her feet might land, lowering herself into inky bottomless darkness, acting on faith. Rey let go and dropped all the way into his memory of the past. 


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A/N: Thanks so much for reading this cookie collection! :) I'm not sure how much long the cookies will go on, because this is one of the Camp NaNo projects and the fic itself will start being posted from the beginning in a couple of weeks. But I'm really REALLY glad I did this. :) And there will be at least a couple more cookies.

Armitage Hux was standing on some sort of upper level area in the same Star Destroyer, a featureless space with gleaming white walls. He stared through a tinted observation window that overlooked a large, enclosed room below. A day or so had passed since the earlier scene she’d just witnessed.  He stood motionless, and Rey probed further in his head. She recoiled from what she found. Not because of the reasons she would have thought-- that she’d delve into darkness, cruelty, the vicious younger version of the man he would become. Those qualities wouldn’t have surprised her a bit; she could have dealt with them easily.

Instead, she brushed the edge of black despair. Pain. Anger. Loss. Longing for a loved one who was now gone forever. And the incredible, unbelievable truth was that she felt all of these profound emotions in _Hux’s_ mind.  How could he have ever suffered through these soft human sensations, this ruthless killer who’d ordered the destruction of five planets? Rey pulled back for just a second, as if grasping at a rope to escape a bottomless pit of grief.

Then self-disgust overwhelmed her. She’d survived Jakku and Starkiller Base and the near-destruction of the rebellion on Crait. She would not give up over a little thing like the impossible emotions  of Armitage Hux.

So she took the challenge and dove deeper. Her sense of separate self dimmed even as the scene became clearer.  She was truly in his head, much more thoroughly than last time. He was on the edge of something, she realized, some decision, some vast change that was the culmination of many small moments.

_She’s gone,_ he was thinking now. _Gone. In a moment, in a flash of light and a puff of smoke. I can’t go on without her. I can’t._

_He’s thinking about a specific person… someone special to him, someone who was on that ship. A girlfriend?_ Rey focused and briefly saw  a vague image of a tall, slender woman with dark skin and tightly curled black hair, beautiful but not young. _Some older woman he was crushing on?_ No; his loss felt sharper and deeper than a boy’s infatuation.

Armitage stared out over the simulation room where the teenaged soldiers in training parried and sparred with each other, seeing none of it. And in a flash, he finally understood what the terrible events of the last few days really meant.

_She_ had been the last decent person he knew, perhaps the last one left in the entire First Order as it stood right now. And she had been the only one who knew the decency and goodness in him. His father saw it, he supposed, but he refused it, rejected the softness in his son. But _she_ coaxed it forth, and she saw it as strength. If she’d lived, he would now have the chance to become a different person entirely.

_But who’s she?_ Rey dimly thought with the bit of herself that was still separate. _I still don’t know who he’s talking about; I don’t know who died in that ship._ She forced all her attention back to the boy’s thoughts.

_I don’t want to be what my father will force me to become_ , he thought in that strange moment of clarity. _But do I have a choice? Any choice at all, without her?_ _She_ was the only one who had ever held out that chance to him in any way. Or at least, the only person who had felt anything good for him, seen anything worthwhile in him, since his hazy memories of a long-lost mother.

And now she was gone.

He looked down at the young recruits in the middle of their training simulation. Some were children, but most were around his own age. His relationship with them had never changed; he’d always secretly longed for their friendship and simultaneously known that he could never, ever have it. So he’d covered his impossible longing with harsh orders and relentless drills, and they were becoming the best soldiers in the galaxy. The army his father was building was partly his handiwork, too, and could be his inheritance.

And for an instant that seemed to hang in the air forever, Armitage wanted only to escape from them. From this place. From all of it.

_If I just had anywhere to go…_

He looked around for a few frantic seconds, his glance darting from side to side of the white plasticine walls that seemed to be moving towards him, closing in.

They had no crack or cranny he could use for a foothold. No avenue of escape. Only the perfect walls, holding him like a rat in a trap.

“Watching the drills, I see,” his father’s voice said in his ear.

He jumped. Brendol Hux stood behind him, and he had clearly moved so silently that he himself had not heard the footsteps at all.

“Yes,” Armitage said dully. But he felt confused, too. He’d expected a horrible punishment for yesterday’s  outburst, but instead, his father sounded quite calm.

“The training material you’ve helped to develop is working very well.”

The boy inclined his head without speaking.

“You’ve got a gift for strategy. To a surprising degree, I must say. Far more than I expected at this point.”

“You know where I got it from,” said the boy, each word heavy with meaning.

“I’m not quite sure what you’re talking about,” said Brendol.

‘Oh yes, you are.”

The older man stiffened, then seemed to deliberately relax. “I don’t know, and I really don’t care to unravel riddles at the moment. It’s time to discuss more important matters.”

His son whirled on him with a red, furious face. “You did this!” His voice shook and cracked. “You sent her to her death.”

“If you’re referring to yesterday’s events, Armitage, you watched an accident of war. Highly unfortunate, but there you are. These things happen.”

“It was no accident!” the boy hissed. “You planned this. You got what you wanted. But I will never, _ever_ forget what you’ve done to her.  To Admiral Sloane… Rae…” His voice broken again.

_Rae Sloane!_ Rey gasped, or whatever the equivalent was in this bodiless state. _I should have known._ She’d seen a glimpse of their relationship in the first memory the day before. She knew that the admiral had sworn to protect him, and that she’d done so to the best of her ability. What Rey hadn’t understood was that Armitage had grown to love her, to cherish her as a replacement for his mysterious lost mother. This was why the boy felt such black, bleak heartbreak at her loss. The only two people he had ever loved with all his child’s heart had died.

At the knowledge, Rey could feel her tether starting to loosen again. The temptation to escape this raw, scalding grief was almost irresistible. Almost. _Oh kriff no,_ she thought grimly. _Here I am, and here I’ll stay_. She focused all her willpower and settled into Hux’s head completely. Then she longer felt herself at all; everything she saw and heard and thought was his.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to all readers, reviewers, and kudo-ers! :) This fic will be one of three projects for Camp NaNo this month... so I'll actually start posting chapters from the beginning soon!! At least one more cookie first, though.

At the knowledge, Rey could feel her tether starting to loosen again. The temptation to escape this raw, scalding grief was almost irresistible. Almost. _Oh kriff no,_ she thought grimly. _Here I am, and here I’ll stay_. She focused all her willpower and settled into Hux’s head completely. Then she longer felt herself at all; everything she saw and heard and thought was his.

“You really cared for her,” said Brendol with surprise in his voice.

_I’ll die before I’ll admit that to you,_ thought Armitage.

“I know what you did, Father,” was all that he said.

Brendol raised an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“Yes, _oh_. You sent her to the surface of the moon of Scipio—"

“To meet with representatives of the former Banking Clan, in hopes of persuading the remnants of the Separatists to allow First Order shipbuilding on the planet  itself,” said Brendol.

“Yes. I know. The lower-ranking officers who otherwise would’ve done this are recent casualties, aren’t they?”

“We’ve sustained far more casualties than I would like,” said Brendol. “Admiral Rae Sloane was the only remaining officer who was high-ranking enough to be taken seriously by the remainder of the clan, and also capable of skillfully negotiating an agreement.”

“Yes, and then the Muun rebels on Scipio just happened to show up, didn’t they? And the admiral just happened to have no choice but to leave the moon, which meant that her shuttle got caught in the middle of a battle, where she didn’t have the slightest chance to survive.”

Brendol shrugged. “Chance is cruel. It’s time you understood that fact, Armitage, if you don’t already.”

“You’ve got an explanation for all of it,” the boy said bitterly. “Why don’t you try this—Rae Sloane was smarter than you, and you couldn’t stand that.”

“Armitage, I’m trying to make allowances, but if this continues—”

“A better strategist, a better vision, better everything—”

“My patience is wearing thin. I won’t warn you again—”

“And ten times the leader you’ll ever be!” the boy finished.

Brendol swiftly stepped closer and raised his shoulder, ready to hit his son with the back of his hand. Armitage grabbed his father’s arm, a kaleidoscope of all the beatings of the past flashing through his memory.

“Don’t,” he said, in a cold, deadly voice. “Don’t you remember last time? You will never lay a hand on me again.”

 His father sighed and stepped back a bit. He walked a few steps to the observation window, gesturing for his son to follow him.  They stood together, watching the soldiers training.

Armitage understood, then, that the two of them had reached an impasse. His father would never admit what he had really done. Truthfully, his own certainty about Brendol Hux’s part in the death of Rae Sloane was fading. He supposed that he could never be sure.

“They really are doing quite well,” said Brendol, breaking into his thoughts. “Each of them will have a part to play in the new order. Each is a cog that fits neatly into the machinery.”

The boy nodded tiredly.

His father’s voice turned low and intimate. “You do realize, don’t you, Armitage,” he said, “that all of this can be yours. All that you see. All that we have. All that is to be.”

“Really. What about Snoke?” Armitage asked without turning his head.

Brendol made a dismissive gesture with his hand.

“And what about that child you said he’s trying to influence, whoever _he_ is?”

“They mean nothing, as you will see in time. Snoke clings to the vestiges of the past, ridiculous nonsense about the Force, and so on. If he chooses to bring in a useless apprentice, then he’ll only waste further time and energy.  But the Jedi and the Sith were failures alike; the Republic and the Empire both fell because of them. We will sweep away the last vestiges of that past.  The future lies in the military of the First Order, and in the technology that we will master.  If you want it. If you will only seize it.”

“I know,” he said, continuing to stare. He was suddenly faint with hunger, as if a stomach had been produced from thin air at his father’s words.

“Can I go and eat dinner now?” he asked.

“In a moment,” said his father.  

_I wonder if he thinks I’d bolt the second I’m out of his sight. I wonder if I would, whether I have anywhere to go or not._ “I’m really very hungry,” said Armitage, feeling as if he hadn’t eaten in at least a month.  _Isn’t that one of the initiation tests for our trainees? Oh, that can’t be right; who could go without food for thirty or forty days? Maybe it’s only for a week._

“By the way,” said Brendol. “We’ll forget what happened yesterday. We’ll say no more about it.”

“We will? I mean… we won’t?”

“If you’d made it as far as the main bridge,” said Brendol, “and carried out your vulgar and nonsensical display there, in full view of the entire crew, then I think that some punishment would be regrettably in order. But, as it is-- we’ve all got our emotional moments, I suppose.”

“But you did it. Didn’t you? Just say it, can’t you just admit it, at least? Tell the truth, for once.  You sent Rae Sloane to her death,” said the boy, his voice trembling.

“I sent her to perform a military action,” said Brendol. “Casualties are always regrettable, but they are necessary.” He shrugged.

The boy looked down into the simulation room, seeing none of it. “And now she’s out of your way,” he said bitterly. “Convenient, isn’t it?”

“Not at all, actually.” Brendol sighed. “I don’t know what we’ll do without the admiral in the coming months. But she had to be sent. Certain… actions are sometimes necessary. It’s really time that you started to learn things like that.”

“I don’t want to,” said Armitage, his voice very low.

“This streak of silly sentimentality ought to have been trained out of you by now.”

“Maybe I don’t _want_ it to be.”

“Well—we’re done wasting our time on that sort of thing. It’s far more important for us to discuss your future now, Armitage,” said Brendol, his voice holding more than a hint of durasteel.

“Maybe I don’t…” He could not finish the sentence.

“You do have a choice, you know,” his father went on, as if he hadn’t heard, although his son knew that he had. “I don’t want to train a replacement. But I will if I must.”

“What?” asked Armitage. An insane, impossible moment of hope fluttered in his chest. Maybe there really was an option. Maybe his father would pick someone else to lead the new military force he was planning. Maybe he himself would  be allowed to sneak away in an escape pod to an obscure desert planet and live out his life as a B’omaar monk.

“So what would happen to me?” he asked. “Would I be thrown out an airlock straightaway?”

His father sighed, and then spoke in a gentle, relentless voice.

“Really, Armitage; there’s no need to say such things. Still, yes; there would be… unfortunate consequences.”

“Oh.” _I knew there had to be a catch to it._

 “There never really was any choice, was there,” he said flatly.

“There’s always a choice of some sort,” said his father. “In this case, it’s not a particularly wide one, I will admit. You can live and take over the leadership of the navy, one day, and then the entire military, in time. Years from now, obviously, and yet not so far away as you might think. You’ll be quite young when you manage it. Many years younger than I was by the time I reached the status of general; decades earlier, most likely. You can have power, prestige, and luxury, and you’ll be more than young enough to enjoy all of the perquisites that accompany your position. Or… well, it would be so much better for us both if I weren’t forced to spell out the alternative.”

Armitage did not respond. He continued to stare out over the training room far below, a high, thin, keening noise filling his mind. It sounded like the crying of a child.

His father stepped closer still, his voice lowering to a purr that held more than a trace of menace, like the rumbling of a vine tiger. “And if you have any thoughts of fighting me on this matter, I would give them up now. You’re little more than a child. I could defeat you easily. Nothing that you do could bring back Rae Sloane, after all. You would give in to your weakness to no purpose. I would be forced to… visit severe certain punishments upon you. What a pity it would be, considering the potential you possess. So.” He stepped back again. “What will you choose, Armitage?”

A softer self called out to him. He could almost hear the voice of a sad child, pleading and tugging on his hand to drag him back to someplace it wished to go. But he could not, would not, follow this weakness.

The instinct to survive was too strong. He knew which way he would choose.

Armitage Hux turned away from the lost ghost of Rae Sloane. And in so doing, he left behind all the possibilities that might have been, the softer paths he could have walked, and the better man he might have become. Or so he believed at that moment.  And really, those paths had been closed to him all along.

“I want to live,” he said.

Then it was as if Rey settled back into herself, at least a bit. She saw the scene from a camera swooping above them both, the jowly hard man, the handsome red-haired boy whose thin young face was setting into hard, bitter lines. She was flying away, upward, up into the air, through the ceiling, even though she wanted to see more, she didn’t want to leave the scene just yet; she could still learn much more. She could feel the intolerable pressures that had crushed Armitage Hux into what he was, that had destroyed something soft and tender in him and compressed the boy into this cruel, hard, tortured man.

But she couldn’t stay. Some stronger force was pulling her out and away from the scene. As she struggled to stay down, the boy turned his head up. She saw a flash of blue eyes and a glint of red-gold hair, a pale, set face, the misery of struggling with tears one last time. it was the last time he would ever cry, she knew; or at least, that was what he thought. She reached down to him, because she couldn’t help it, and… and was he grabbing her hand?

Then Rey was slammed back into the dank, cramped little cubicle in the cargo hold, the smell of oil and solvent stinging her nose, her chest pounding as she gasped.

The chill burrowed into her bones. But the strong, lean body under hers was warm. And her right hand was warm too, nestled into a much larger one, lanky, with long, strong fingers. She could feel the beat of the pulse through this other palm.

Rey opened her eyes. The first thing she saw was her own right hand clasped into Hux’s left one, his palm up, sheltering her like a baby bird, his touch gentle and light. She was lying fully on top of him, and the realization shot a hot blush up her neck. He jerked his head up at her, his eyes wide, incredulous, and brilliant blue. And for one heartbeat, she saw the face of the wounded, lonely boy, beneath the vicious killer that the man had become.

Then she gasped and yanked her arm away, scrambling up and back, away from the bunk, and the moment was over.


	6. Rey Makes a Decision

A/N: Thanks to all readers, reviewers, and kudo-ers! 😊 In this chapter… we find out more about what’s going on with everyone else on the Falcon, and Rey makes an interesting decision…

 

+++

A few hours later, after Rey had collapsed for some broken sleep, they all met in the round seating area in the lounge of the Falcon. All four of them, she thought, the only remainder of the Resistance that was still on Teth. The rest had all taken the hidden ship to Mandalore in a last-ditch attempt to persuade their government to support the cause. Rey understood why the senior leadership had needed to go; there was no other way they even had a chance to be taken seriously. Leia, D’Arcy, Connix, and Chewbacca had left several days ago with both C-3PO and R2D2. Black Squadron had accompanied them as support, and they’d also brought the two engineers whose names Rey could never remember. The only droids left on the Falcon were BB8 and that strange 2-1B surgical model, and they also had the two cooks.

And then, there was Armitage Hux, that troubling, enigmatic presence chained to a cot in a storage room in the cargo bay, but she wasn’t going to count him.

“Rey?” Finn’s concerned voice broke into her thoughts.

“Oh. And… well, that’s about all,” Rey finished lamely. She’d done her best to stumble through an account of her last Enneagram session with Hux.

She wasn’t even sure how coherent she’d managed to sound. She had gone over everything that had just happened in the interrogation room, and she’d  tried to be as thorough as possible, but beneath it all, her mind seemed to be running on a different track, just slightly off kilter from everyone else in the room. The points that stuck sharpest in her mind weren’t the ones that any of the others focused on, or saw as having any importance at all, in fact—Hux’s pain, his loss, his wavering on the edge, and his final fall into the darkness his father had always planned for him. But then, she hadn’t done a very good job of conveying the emotions the teenaged Hux had felt, and nobody else at the table had seemed very interested in hearing about them in the first place.

“Okay,” said Poe, steepling his fingers together. “So what did we actually learn from this one?”

Rey rubbed her aching temples. It felt like she hadn’t gotten any sleep at all, even though she’d snatched a few hours of tossing and turning. She’d already figured out that if she didn’t collapse for at least a few hours after an Enneagram session, then she was dead to the world and no good to anyone. “There was a point where Hux had to make a choice,” Rey said tentatively. “And that’s when he made it, when he was about fifteen years old. Although then again, it wasn’t really a choice at all. There wasn’t anything else for him to choose but what his father wanted for him.”

“But we already knew he had to choose what he did,” Poe pointed out, “or he wouldn’t be General of the First Order Army right now.”

Rose snorted. “No way he would’ve gotten that job so young if it wasn’t for his slimy father. Nepotism at its finest.”

“I don’t know about that,” said Finn. “I knew him, Rose. You didn’t. The man does understand strategy.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Poe said impatiently. “I always heard a lot about Rae Sloane, and I wondered what happened to her. I guess we know now.”

“I always thought Brendol Hux killed her,” said Finn.

Poe raised his eyebrows. “You knew about Admiral Sloane?”

“Of course I did. We didn’t spend every second of our lives training,” said Finn. “We had time to pick up things we weren’t supposed to know. And we always knew a lot more information than our superiors thought we did. Nobody ever really talked openly about Rae Sloane—she was kind of an off-limits subject. But the rumor was always that General Hux’s father had her killed.”

“Interesting to know, but I don’t see how it’s going to help us now,” said Poe. “What interests me a lot more is that Snoke was obviously getting into Kylo Ren’s head pretty early.”

“So Armitage Hux actually knew about Snoke’s influence on Kylo at the time?” asked Rose incredulously. “Or I guess we should say Ben, if he was only ten years old. He hadn’t become Kylo yet.”

“Yes. But I get the feeling that he and Brendol might be the only ones who did know,” said Rey. “And he didn’t know who the child was.”

“Well, did his father know this kid was actually Ben Solo?” asked Rose.

“I doubt it. Not then, anyway.”

“Okay… how’d _he_ find out any of this then?” asked Finn.

Rey shrugged. “Armitage didn’t know how his father learned it, so I don’t know either.” Everyone else at the table gave her a wary look. “What?” she asked.

“You’re calling him by his first name now?” Rose wrinkled her nose.

“I can’t just say ‘Hux’,” Rey said, hoping that her face didn’t show the sudden flush of heat rising up her neck. “I’m seeing Brendol Hux in these memories too. It would get confusing.”

Poe’s eyes narrowed. “It’s confusing, all right,” he muttered, quietly enough so that Rey could pretend not to have heard him.

“What?” asked Finn.

“Nothing. Look, there’s something else that I think we should start to do,” said Poe. “We need to have someone in that room with him all the time, and definitely all the time you’re there, Rey. We need to watch him a lot more closely. I’ll set up a pallet—there should be just enough space on the floor.”

“What?” exclaimed Rey. “Poe, you can’t do that. The Enneagram doesn’t work if there’s anyone else in there but me.”

“Somebody has to stay with Hux 26 hours a day to keep him from trying anything,” Poe said doggedly, “and it obviously can’t be you, not all the time. And it’s too dangerous anyway. So it’s going to be me. I’ll start tonight.”

“Are you joking?” Rose stared at him. “Poe, we need you to keep everything else on this ship running. Finn and I can’t do it all on our own.”

“Maybe you could take turns sometimes, but I have to be the main person who’s watching him--”

“Excuse me!” Rey interrupted him. “As I’ve been trying to tell you, I can’t get anything out of Hux without this Enneagram bond. And if you’re there, Poe—if anyone’s there—it doesn’t work. So no, you’re not moving into the storage room with Hux.”

“Rose? Finn? You agree with me, right? You know that Hux is nothing but bad news, and he’s going to find a way to hurt Rey unless someone else is in with him all the time. Right?” Poe glanced from side to side and found no support. “Great.”   He rose abruptly. “I’m going to check on the cloaking field.”

“Poe—” Finn rose from his seat. “Poe, just hold on a sec, okay?” He jerked his head at Rose and Rey, mouthing _I’ll calm him down._ Both men headed out the circular entryway leading to the corridor and were swiftly out of sight.

Rey sat back with a sigh. Ri’aa help them, was this really going to start again? It was the same as when he’d kissed her in the cargo bay and Kylo had reached out to her involuntarily through the Force bond. She’d been kissing Poe back even though most of her emotions consisted of wanting to prove something to herself, to convince herself that she could feel desire for someone else. Or maybe even  to persuade herself that it was a good idea to give Poe what he wanted so badly from her, because she didn’t particularly want to die a virgin, and their lifespan didn’t seem destined to stretch out much longer at that moment.

Except …

Except that now she understood a bit more about why she’d seen Hux at the end of the vision.

Kylo wasn’t the only one who had been responsible for the bond. Somehow, in some way that she couldn’t understand at all, she had bonded with Hux, too. It was as if the Enneagram had connected the two of them before she’d ever hooked it up to him. Was that even possible? It seemed to be governed by rules all its own, so for all she knew, its powers could reach outside of linear time.

In that case, she really, really wished it would tell her what she should do now.

“Are you okay?” Rose’s concerned voice broke into her thoughts.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” Rey rubbed her nose, trying and failing to blink away fatigue. She longed for another cup of caf. _Maybe I should have it. I should go and do another Enneagram session right now, and it’s my only hope of staying awake ~~~~_

“Do you think that maybe Poe has a point?” Rose asked tentatively.

“Oh, don’t you start too,” said Rey. “The Enneagram absolutely will not work if anyone else is there. You saw that the first night you all brought Hux in.”

“But is it safe to be in that room with him? _Completely_ safe?”

“Maybe not,” Rey admitted, “but I don’t see that we all have a choice. The only way this can possibly work is if I’m in there by myself.”

“Okay, if that’s what you think—I trust you,” said Rose. “But it has to be really exhausting, what you’re doing.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” sighed Rey, leaning back against the padded high back of the circular seat.

 “How is the whole thing even working, exactly?” asked Rose.

“Uh… it’s like I’ve said. I sort of see things. Memories. Of his, I mean,” said Rey.

“You really are in Hux’s head?” Rose asked with a mixture of disgust and fascination. “Ugh.”

“I have to be,” said Rey. “It isn’t going to work with anybody else.”

“I’m glad Finn doesn’t have to do it, that’s for sure,” said Rose.

Rey nodded. She was starting to understand how empathic Finn was, and she knew that it probably would be more than he could endure to be in Armitage Hux’s mind.

“So what’s going on with you two, anyway?” she asked.

Rose gave a long sigh. “I don’t know… but is the week before the apocalypse really the best time to start a romance? If we even _get_ a week.”

“Depends on how long-lasting you want it to be, I guess,” said Rey.

“It’s not that I want a one-night stand, exactly,” said Rose. “But I’m kind of starting to figure out that celibacy was a big part of stormtrooper training, and I  hate to think of poor Finn getting blown up before he ever has a chance to have sex, so there’s that… but I’m just not sure if he’s really that into me, which is another problem. What about you and Poe?”

Rey grimaced. “Is it that obvious?”

“From his end? Yes. From yours…” Rose gave her an uncertain look. “It isn’t really any of my business, but…”

“Please, whatever it is, just say it. I’m not good at picking up on subtle cues,” said Rey.

“Oh, I’m not either,” Rose assured her. “All I want to say, Rey, and you can completely tell me to shut up if you don’t want to hear this, but… okay, I’ll just say it… don’t let Poe pressure you into anything.”

Rey picked at her fingernails. “Do you think that’s what he’s doing?”

“I don’t know. I think he’s a nice guy, but he’s used to getting what he wants. Don’t have sex with him just because it’s your last big chance for one more fling before the end of the galaxy, okay? I mean, you can really tell me to shut up now if you don’t agree.”

“No.” Rey smiled slightly. “I think you’re right, Rose.”

“Hey!” exclaimed Rose. “Maybe we should get Poe and Finn together. From what they both said, it sounds like they bonded right away.”

“They’d be a cute couple for sure…”  Rey ended the statement in a huge, involuntary yawn.

“Are you doing another session tomorrow night?”

“I can’t wait that long,” said Rey.

“It seems like it takes so much out of you, though.” Rose’s dark eyes were concerned, and Rey had to blink away sudden tears. _She really cares about me._ A more cynical voice that had long accompanied her on Jakku whispered _that of course she does, you’re the only one who has a hope of getting through to Hux and finding out all the First Order’s military secrets, but that’s the only reason why._ Rey didn’t always listen to that nasty voice anymore, but suspicion about the motives of others had helped her to survive on Jakku—so she couldn’t entirely ignore it, either.

Well, whether or not her friendship with Rose was a genuine one was an issue she could worry about if they all survived the next few days.

“Yeah, it does,” she said. “But remember what you said about us living in the week before the apocalypse? I’m just going to have to suck it up. I’m thinking about doing another one right now, when Hux least expects it.”

“Are you serious?”

“I have to be.”

“Rey, you really look like you need a _lot_ more sleep.”

She shook her head. “There’ll be time to sleep once I have all the military secrets out of him. I’m so close, Rose. I really am.”

 “Okay,” said Rose. But she kept studying Rey, as if trying to decide whether to say something more.

"What _is_ it, Rose?" Rey's headache was getting worse.

She leaned closer. ""Just be careful with that Enneagram, okay? You can get in deeper than you think."

"I wish you'd explain exactly what you mean," said Rey, too tired to be diplomatic. "Do you know something more about how it works than you're saying, or not?"

In answer, Rose started to get up. Rey caught at her hand.

"Please, Rose, don't be angry at me. I just-- this isn't a good time for me, to say the least."

"I know. And Rey… good luck." Rose smiled faintly.  "I don’t know how you manage to do it at all. I don’t even understand how you can sit in the same room with Hux.”

Rey nodded. Rose headed down the corridor to check some specs on the cloaking device—she was better at that type of thing than Poe Dameron was ever likely to be—but Rey lingered for a few moments. The lights were turned down very low for the night, no more than glowing spots of blue and pink and orange, and the lounge was filled with odd shadows and dark corners that the brighter ring of light from the corridor only seemed to emphasize. Some of those corners would be great places to hide, Rey thought. In fact, that was true of so many nooks and crannies on the Falcon. This ship had undoubtedly been tinkered with and upgraded and modified almost from the moment it rolled off the assembly line in Corellia. She had no idea of just how many hiding spaces might have been added for the use of smugglers.

_Now, why am I thinking about that?_ she wondered as she headed down towards the cargo hold. She stretched out with her feelings, trying to find the answer, already knowing the harder she tried, the more thoroughly it would elude her. Because of Hux? Yes… that could be it. The idea of escaping must have occurred to him. But a force field stretched around the room, and every time she was in there with him, he was magnacuffed to the cot. How could he possibly get out of that?

_You broke through the force field yourself a few hours ago, genius. Remember that?_

_Ugh_. Rey ground her teeth. She remembered, all right.

It was hard to keep her guard up around him, much harder than it should have been. It didn’t help that Armitage Hux seemed so boyish and harmless to her, more of an annoyingly snarky brat than anything else. (Except when she’d gotten altogether too close to him, when he seemed dangerous in an entirely different way—although Rey was trying hard not to remember those moments.) Rose never missed a chance to let them all know that she thought he was blustering and ineffectual, and Poe always agreed. But Finn, the only one of them who’d ever actually known Hux, regarded him with a tight-lipped, wary respect. She constantly had to remind herself that she was rummaging around in the head of a man who’d been an officer since he was sixteen years old, who’d invented hyperspace tracking, who developed training for stormtroopers, who had come perilously close to destroying the entire Resistance, who had blown up five planets, for R'iia’s sake.

The problem was that the boy she saw in his memories had done none of these things yet. He hadn’t become the mastermind of the First Order. He wasn’t… well… _evil._ Not yet.

And that lost boy made it very hard to remember the twisted man he’d become.

As Rey entered the cargo bay, she decided that she’d never forget that again. Her resolve strengthened. She’d redouble her efforts to get at Hux’s important memories, the ones that involved military secrets only he would know. She’d be on her guard every second she was near him. And she’d never, ever be careless enough to give him another opportunity to escape. Because really, that was what she had done when she’d been stupid enough to break through the force field. Her steps slowed as a thought struck her.

Maybe that was why she’d been thinking about hiding places. If Hux ever manage to escape from the storage room, there would be a lot of opportunities for him to hide. Then, while they were all frantically searching for him, he just might find a way off the Falcon. His own ship was parked only a few hundred yards away. That had always been the problem with keeping the _Crìochnaich_ at the base—not that a better option really existed.

Rey closed her eyes, struggling to feel any clues—currents of potential danger, whispers of unease, stress points in the Force. But the Force remained maddeningly elusive.

Well, this next Enneagram session would just have to be the one where she got some real answers out of him. And maybe Poe had a point in one way, at least. She wasn’t ashamed to admit that. She’d even tell him so once he’d calmed down a bit. To keep from worrying about Hux escaping, somebody really would have to watch him all the time. After all, Finn was right: the man understood strategy, or he never could have become the youngest General in the history of either the Order or the Empire, no matter who his father was. Yes, it was time that extra precautions were taken to make sure he didn’t have the chance to try anything. Somebody had to start spending the night where they could keep an eye on him.

But that someone could only be her, because of the Enneagram bond.

Maybe that was an explanation Poe _didn’t_ need to hear.

She hesitated at the door to the small storage room. She could pull up a folding cot right outside the door, but then she would have no way of knowing what he might be doing in the room. If she actually tried this, then she was going to have to sleep with Armitage Hux. _Okay, that sounded wrong… I didn’t mean it that way at all…  I mean, in the same room with him. On the floor, I guess.  There isn’t enough space in that cot…_ She could suddenly picture exactly how close they’d need to be to each other if she was going to try to share the small bed space with him. She’d basically be on top of him. Or he’d be on top of her. Or…

_Stop it!_

Maybe she shouldn’t do this. Maybe Poe was right; maybe he ought to be the one who spent the night in this room. She certainly didn’t see any signs that his emotions were being compromised where Hux was concerned. He hated the other man as much as ever—more so, now that he wasn’t just an abstract figurehead of the First Order and they actually had to share air space with each other. Of course, that meant that if Hux did try to escape, Poe would probably just put a blaster bolt through his chest. Then they’d never learn anything from him.

_You should wait,_ a voice of caution whispered. _Set up watches in shifts, so someone’s always awake_. But there were still too many impulsive instincts in her to listen to the voice at that moment. And for all she knew, having anybody in that room for even a minute might disrupt the Enneagram bond.

And anyway, she should do another session with Hux right now. The morning might be too late. An hour from now might be too late, for all she knew. The cloaking system was working, but the price for its protection was that they were all blind sitting skittermice. They had no way of knowing even what anyone else on Teth might be doing, let alone ships outside the atmosphere.

 

She pushed the door open firmly, finger on the trigger of the blaster in her other hand.

Rey had been half prepared to find Hux unsnapping the magnacuffs and preparing to somehow escape, all with his lips curved in that annoying gloating smile.  But instead, he was asleep.

She closed the door and crossed the little room.  The dimmed fixture high on the far wall cast long shadows across the cot, and she studied him in the dappled light. He actually looked peaceful, the hard sculpture of his face relaxed and softened. _He’s a damn handsome man._ The thought drifted through her mind again, now that she saw him without the harshness and suspicion that usually sharpened his features. She leaned closer. His sandy eyelashes were fluttering, and she wondered if he was dreaming. And if so, what about.

_Probably who he plans to torture first if he ever manages to get out of here,_ she thought uncharitably. _I guess it would be me!_

But…

It was hard to believe that he would ever hurt her. Much too hard, in fact, when it should have been, _had_ to be, the easiest thing to believe about him.

Her gaze went down to his pale forearms, clearly visible below the rolled-up shirtsleeves, and she frowned. She hadn’t realized that he was being forced to sleep with magnacuffs on. _That’s got to hurt. The force field’s working; it’s not like he can go anywhere. Maybe I could just loosen them…_

Rey scowled. _No, I couldn’t, and I won’t!_

She’d come into the room with the idea of shaking him awake and starting another Enneagram session right away, but somehow, she couldn’t. She already knew that she was going to allow Hux to continue to sleep.

Rey took a few blankets out of a little closet and arranged them on the floor, sitting with her back against the wall. For a long time, she studied the sleeping Hux as if held the answer to a riddle she was afraid to ask. Then, although she hadn’t really expected to fall asleep, she did, the sound of his low, even breathing lulling her into dreams.

 


End file.
